


All Shiny and New

by Detliela



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: F/M, Post Loyalty fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-27
Updated: 2011-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Detliela/pseuds/Detliela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and she wonders if she didn't just throw everything important to her away</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Shiny and New

Title: All Shiny and New  
Disclaimer: I make no profit and have no money to sue for anyway.  
Rating: R

A/N: This picks up immediately after Loyalty

A/N2: This is a bit out of my comfort zone and experimental style wise (for me) so constructive criticism is welcome...just play nice please.

A/N3: Thank you to Daystarsearcher for the beta help : )

 

All Shiny and New

She stares down at the phone in her would be office after she hangs up with the chief of D’s. Her heart’s hammering and she’s praying she didn’t just completely fuck up her life. But then she imagines what it would have been like running Major Case – administrative and political decisions that she would ultimately take responsibility for, being at the chief’s beck and call whenever he disapproved of said decisions and him thinking he had her in his pocket because he got her to fire her partner of ten years. And she knows she can’t do it; can’t let him think he completely won – turned her against everything she had ever been taught about loyalty.

She runs her finger against the cool metal of her gun and then her badge, tracing its points and ridges, and the numbers etched into it that have defined her life for more than fifteen years. Leaving them there changes everything and she wonders if it’s hit Bobby yet.

Bobby.

The questions hit her like little jabs to her ribs – what will he do now? Who will be there for him now? Will he really, completely lose it now?

She leaves, hoping she might find him still in the parking lot or smoking a cigarette, finally letting go of all the “okays” and firm, steady nods to reassure her he doesn’t, will never blame her. A part of her wants to see him yell and throw over her would-be desk just to make some gesture of feeling something instead of the calm “I knew it was coming” shrugs and half smiles. Be as angry and broken up about this as I am! But she doesn’t see him anywhere, not even down the few blocks she drives to the subway entrance she knows he uses.

So, she goes home, dresses into her gray yoga pants and a Spinal Tap T-shirt that belonged to Joe, and plops down on her sofa. She sits and stares at her reflection in the TV across from her, sighs, thinks about calling Bobby, but doesn’t.

XXXX

When Bobby gets home he glances around his apartment, dim and empty, and shoves his hands into his pockets. He wanders to the kitchen, thinking dinner would be a normal thing to do now, but sees the pile of dishes in the sink and just doesn’t feel like going through the trouble. So he paces – into the living room, circling back around and down the hall to the bedroom and then back again. He takes in the ceiling high book shelves in the living room and otherwise sparse walls except a few pieces of art he collected while in the army and the few family photos he took from his mother’s stuff.

He thinks about a couple days ago, when Eames let him drive her home after Ross’s funeral and the drink they shared on her sofa to Ross. Her home is anything but sparse, littered with little pictures of siblings and nephews and nieces and parents, all at various stages in their lives with her and Joe. His eyes stayed a little too long on a candid photo of her and Joe in someone’s backyard at some summer barbecue with her sitting on his thigh, arm looped around his neck, smiling down at him while he made an exaggerated smile for the camera. He wonders if that’s what a home should feel like – warm and brightly lit with smiling loved ones (dead and living) all around you.

The memory makes him ache in the same way Eames’s tight lips and watery eyes did just a few hours ago, a dull throbbing starting in his guts and slithering up his spine, around his ribs, and cinching any artery and blood vessel he has. He can still feel her small body against him, strong and solid, but so tiny, and closes his eyes to recall the citrus mixed with the earthy smell of lemongrass that he thinks must have been from her body wash. He thinks about never getting up again and walking into Major Case to wait for her to join him. He thinks about never being able to go home again. Ever.

And that’s when he goes to pick up the phone.

XXXX

Her apartment has never been cleaner and her closet never as organized as it is now – after five days of unemployment. She cleans the kitchen and then the bathroom and then repeats. She discovers Pledge multi-surface might be the best cleansing invention ever and even uses it to wipe down her hardwood floor on her hands and knees before deciding she needs to invest in one of those micro-fiber mops her sister has.

She wipes her hands on a dusty pair of loose jeans she never wears unless at home and rearranges her messy ponytail/bun hybrid before picking up her cell. She nibbles on her lip as she goes to her contacts and then finds Bobby name. He hasn’t tried to get in touch with her and she really shouldn’t be surprised, but it’d be nice to have someone to help run interference with her family and their “what the fuck are you thinking” faces and tones. Someone to commiserate with who actually understands. Or she thinks they could at least keep each other’s ear to the ground in their job hunts, or help ease this rumbling in her gut that clearly says you just threw everything important to you away.

She touches her finger to his name and then brings the phone to her ear to listen to it ring and ring until it just goes to voicemail. She ends the call without saying anything. She nibbles on a hangnail on her thumb and can almost still feel the scratch of his stubble against her cheek (rough, but welcomed) where he has kissed her and the flannel, soft above the blocks of his shoulders. She thinks about calling again and actually leaving a message, but her finger stops mid-air. What the hell am I supposed to say to him? How's the whole unemployment thing working for you? She shakes her head and then searches for her sister’s number.

“Hey, Lex. What’s up?” Liz answers, but then mutters something like “get your shoes on NOW.”

“Oh, you know, just basking in my unemployment. Hey, you feel like coming into the city after you drop Nate off? We could go to that ridiculous boutique you like.”

“Oh, I’d like to, but I have yoga class with Jolene on Tuesdays.”

Jolene?

“Oh. Okay. Well I should probably dust off my resume anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it—“

“How about you come spend the night Saturday and you can come to church with me on Sunday before brunch?”

“Maybe. I’ll call you.”

“Okay. I gotta go. Love you.”

Love you too, she thinks as she hears an exasperated “Nate" and then the click of being hung up on. She sighs and surveys her little kitchen, eyes falling on the cabinets. She shrugs and decides to clean them out.

XXXX

Lt. Col. Ann Martin doesn’t look that much different than the last time Bobby saw her, when he left Korea (and the army) with the intent to follow Declan to Qauntico (his mother’s condition having other plans for him). Her eyes are still narrow and stern, her lips thin and colorless, and her simple brown hair, bone straight and just barely touching her shoulders. Though, her face is more wrinkled with sunspots, and the reading glasses hanging from her neck are a dead giveaway that it really has been well over twenty years.

Bobby wipes his palms against his thighs and watches as she reads over his rather thick file. He ignores the vibrating of his phone in his pocket and shifts forward, clearing his throat. Ann looks up at him then with a half corner smirk that makes him wonder for a second if Eames isn't Ann's illegitimate offspring.

“Goren, Goren, Goren,” she says, half shaking her head. “You know I was ready to find a reason to court marshal you just to keep you on my team…or arrest Dr. Gage to get his hooks out of you…”

He shifts again, crossing and then uncrossing his legs, and wanting to think about anything but Declan. But he can’t stop himself from wondering what would have happened if he had stayed there, erasing the sixth months he spent in the Gages’ home, Declan grooming him for the FBI. He wonders what else that would have changed, who else he never would have known.

“Look, I know my file from the NYPD is…”

“Colorful?"

“Yes, but I’m not…unstable…or crazy and I need a job.”

“You had the makings of a brilliant investigator and despite some worrying infractions it looks like you are, but…our clients pay good money for our security services because we’re reliable. I can’t have someone who might jeopardize that on my—“

“I won’t—“

“You’re damn right you won’t because you’re starting on a trial basis with no promises.”

He half grins, but can see she’s fighting a smile or a sarcastic remark, like "I knew you’d crawl back to me eventually” or something just as dismissive; something she might have said to him had he come back all those years ago.

“And you know this may not be as…meaty as what you’re used to…”

He nods and thinks he has to start this new life somewhere, somewhere outside of his sparse, empty walls and a partner who can have her own life and career now, while Ann tells him to come back Friday to fill out necessary paperwork.

“Oh, and you should come by for dinner sometime. Janice would love to see you,” she says as Bobby rises from his seat. “You know she has a younger half sister about your age…”

She waggles her eyebrow, but he shakes his head with a soft “no thanks.” He walks out of her office and pulls out his phone, wondering who wants to help him refinance his home this time, but then sees Eames’ name on his missed calls and something tightens in his throat. But he doesn’t call her back.

XXXX

Her father’s convinced she’s in denial about her situation – about the career she has just thrown away and the fact that she hasn’t been in any hurry to find something else to do or anything really. But she says she is doing something – projects she has been wanting to do like wallpapering the bathroom in her apartment and going to a women’s choir with her sister and Jolene on Wednesdays. Though, she doesn’t admit to the fact she’s found herself watching more daytime TV than is necessarily healthy; lounging on the sofa in whatever ratty clothes she threw on and debating at length whether to bother with showering.

Her sister starts giving scowls at her rumpled, greasy hair and decides a new man is what she needs to move on with her life, not back to the PD like the rest of her family would like to see. She starts throwing guys at her almost immediately – a divorced single dad here; a widower surgeon there. Alex can only roll her eyes and shake her head searching for excuses, but all the ones she can come up with she can’t use because they no longer apply.

And a month later she sits in an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, washed and aired in a slinky black dress her sister picked out, while the surgeon recounts all the people he has saved today. There’s a family of four in a near fatal car crash where the youngest, a five year old, was thrown through the windshield and he says it with this smug smile (because he is the reason the boy still has his arm) that makes her want to slap him and phone her sister to ask, “Are you fucking serious?”

Yes, he's handsome, with his black hair and blue eyes and sharp cheekbones. And the restaurant is pricey with a menu in a language she can't read but is sure Goren could. The doctor fakes his way through, ordering by memory and not by actually reading the words and assures her with a wave of his hand that she'll like whatever the hell it is he just ordered for her. She cringes and takes a gulp of her wine.

Later, after a slow meal and stories about Harvard med school and his passion of kickboxing, he finally asks, "So you were a cop." She nods as he signs the check and tries to explain her ten years in Major Case, while he tries to steer her with a hand on her waist towards his car. She stops mid-sentence while he starts a story about a surgery on a cop he did and she starts to wonder if Bobby might be home. Thinks, even, that she could walk over there without much problem, heels and all.

“I had a nice time,” he says, eyes looking over her in a way that would have Bobby rolling in his eyes and ready to compare shoe size.

“The food was great,” she says. “I’d never been here before.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s a lot of new things I could expose you to.”

He steps closer and she puts up a hand.

“Down boy.”

“Come on. Let me take you home.”

“I’ll catch the subway.”

He sneers and for a second she has an impulse to reach for her gun (not that she will find it there), but then he steps back, obviously not used to being told “no.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” she replies and turns without another word.

She walks as briskly as the heels she’s wearing will allow and takes a short cut down a side street that isn’t particularly well lit and she knows it’s a mistake before she hears the kid step out from behind the dumpster.

She stops dead, hands crossed over her chest and the little clutch she borrowed from her sister under her arm. She swallows and takes in the grey hoodie and the face she can't see, and the gun he has pointed at her chest. He's short but wide and she thinks he might just be a kid since his hand is shaking more than her own. His voice squeaks when he yells for her to give him her purse and all she can think is: breathe. You spent nearly twenty fucking years training for situations like this. You will not be jarred by some scared kid trying prove how tough he is.

“Okay. Just…be careful.”

She hopes her voice didn’t shake too much, but can’t really tell since all she can hear is the jack-hammering of her blood in her ears as she imagines pulleys and bloody tables and screams behind shower curtains. She holds out the little clutch and finds her other hand on her hip where a holster should be, but isn’t.

Breathebreathebreathebreathe.

“There isn’t any cash,” she says, her voice wavering more than she likes on the last word.

The kid shuffles forward and yells, “Just put it on the ground!”

“Okay. Okay.”

She crouches to place it on the ground and there’s a crack or maybe a pop from behind her, like a car backfiring, and it spooks the kid, his finger slipping, probably just slightly, on the trigger, but enough for the boom of the shot to echo off the walls in the ally.

There's a sharp, burning, in her stomach and she somewhat feels the back of her head hit the concrete, but then everything is just black.

XXXX

Bobby doesn't get used to getting home at a decent hour. It's still light out and there's too many hours before the start of the next day to fill up. He tries to find extra things to do at the office before he leaves -- tries to find some other angle, but trying to teach banks and big wig business men all the risky openings they leave for crooks (who are probably smarter than the Harvard educated bigwigs) isn't exactly as thrilling as honing in on the actual crook. Or as consuming.

Sometimes he'll go to a bar or even over to Ann's and Janice's for dinner and big sister-like glances and suggestions about who could be taking up his time. But he still finds himself wandering his apartment thinking about different books he might want to buy (I could use a new copy of Slaughter House Five) or how maybe he should finally update the kitchen (tear out the cabinets and counter first...). Or Eames. 

He mentions her once to Ann and she smiles that "ah-ha" smile she loves to show and says, "I see." She also has not mentioned another straight, single female acquaintance or friend since. 

One night, after several weeks of his new job, he pops some frozen Salisbury steak into the microwave with the 6:30 news on in the background. That's when he hears someone, a news anchor, a fucking stranger, utter her name:

"Alexandra Eames, a former detective with the NYPD's major case squad, was shot last night in an apparent robbery in Brooklyn..."

He doesn't hear much else after that, but the words shot and former linger in his ears and he just might have stopped breathing. He drops the fork he holds and staggers towards his cluttered desk and starts searching through his notebook for some phone number he knows he has to have somewhere that belongs to her sister or parents.

She can't be dead. She can't be dead. She can't--

"Ms. Eames remains in critical condition. Moving on to other NYPD news..."

Bobby stops with hands shoved in between papers and notepads.

Critical.

Remains.

Brooklyn?

And that's when he lets the papers and receipts, leather binder and all, fall towards his feet and he rushes out his door.

XXXX

It feels like she's swimming. Or rather, floating ear deep with eyes shut against the sharp sunlight and they honestly just feel too heavy to bother opening anyway. So she decides to just go with it and float along, limbs heavy but light all at the same time; muffled sounds, voices, beeps, and blips blurring one right into another.

I have to get up, she thinks, but then realizes, oh, right, no I don't.

So, she sleeps.

XXXX

Bobby goes to two other hospitals before he finds her, rushing the nurses’ station at each with barks and clenched fists. The blank (or maybe fearful) stares he receives convinces him he's at the wrong place and he runs off to the next. At the third hospital he gets a scowl, but also a response:

"And you are?"

He lets out a harsh breath he didn't know he was holding and wonders if it's been there in his throat all the time he's been searching and demanding for his partner.

"I'm, uh...her par...." he stumbles. "We're friends." Maybe.

"Ms. Eames is in ICU. Only family is allowed in ICU."

"Please. I just--"

He huffs and his fingers dig into the formica of the counter top. He tries to remember how to breathe like a normal person; how to not make a scene and get himself thrown out before he ever even gets in.

"Please. Just tell me how she is."

He watches her consider him, looking like a stern mother waiting for her son to get to cleaning his room. He swallows, shifts, and then finally flails his hands up hopelessly. Please!

"I can't let you in if you're not family. Not without permission from a family member at least."

"Is any of her family here? Her sister? Liz? Is she here?"

The nurse huffs, but nods.

"She was. Look, what's your name? I can put you on a list for her family to approve when they get back tomorrow. Or if you have a number of her sister or father, I can ask their permission over the phone."

"I don't....I don't need to be put on a list. I need to see her."

"And I can't let you. I'm sorry."

He nods, tersely, and takes a step back even though he's entertaining the idea of just trotting down the hallway to peer into every room he comes to until he sees her. I have to see her. I have to. The mantra goes round and round in his head, while his thumb and forefinger tug at his bottom lip and he eyes the doors just down the hall that he's sure leads to the ICU.

"Sir, don't," the nurse says, causing him to look back at her. "If I at least tell you how she is will you just wait until we can get permission from the family?"

"Is...is she okay?"

"Barring any unforeseen infection she should be."

He nods.

"I'll wait. Please just call her sister so I can see her." If they'll let me see her.

She mutters a “fine," and notates something on a chart before she says, "There's a waiting room down that hall. Please go and stay there. I'll let you know if you can see her."

He nods and shuffles down the hall to a little room with rounded, mint green plastic chairs and plops into one. He buries his face in his palms and waits.

XXXX

Her head throbs and there's an itching, burning spreading between her chest and belly. And the light is back peeling open her eyes and blinding her, but this time she finds herself pulling away and realizes it's actually a thumb holding up her eyebrow.

"Ms. Eames?"

She thinks she maybe hums in response, but then hears her name again a bit more forcefully. She blinks and squeezes her eyes shut. She finally opens them only to shut them again at the harsh fluorescent light.

"Come on. Come on back to us now," she hears a voice, deep, stern, but soft. Kind of like her high school biology teacher whom all of her friends had crushes on.

She squints, but looks over the pale walls and the machine, beeping and bleeping, beside her, and the wires running from it to the vein in her hand. She looks up at the doctor hovering over her, but stares behind him at the broad figure looking at her sideways with his hands shoved into pockets, head down.

Bobby?

For a second she wonders if wasn't all some medicated delusion, if the throbbing is from the blow Jo Gage gave her and the last years were some crazy doped up nightmare. That they could just work through this and get back to what they were without all of the shit and starts and stops and betrayal and fucking distance.

"Ms. Eames? Can you tell us where you are?"

"Ms.," not "Detective." Not a dream.

"Looks like a hospital."

"Good. You gave us all quite a scare..."

The doctor goes on in his well mannered voice explaining important things, like her progress and health, but she isn't listening. She's looking at the man behind him, hovering, trying to stay out of the way against the opposite wall. So this is what a girl's gotta do to get you to pay attention.

"You still have a long recovery period, but we'll start getting you up and moving in a couple of days. So we'll leave you to rest."

She hears the doctor leave, but watches Bobby turn to follow.

"Bobby?"

"I promised I'd call your sister if you woke up while she was gone..."

His voice is strange and strangled, and he won't look at her.

"Wait."

She can hear him swallow and his eyes are shiny when he looks at her.

"How long have I been here?"

He clears his throat and lets out a noise that clearly says he'd rather not remember.

"Four. Four days."

And then he's gone.

XXXX

He sits in the same damn plastic chair he did the first night he came to the hospital, while her family take turns rotating in and out of her ICU room. He stares at his joined hands and then scrubs them over this face. He shifts, crosses, uncrosses his legs, and finally just wanders the waiting room. He remembers the first night he sat there and the wary stare his rumpled form received from Liz many hours later.

"Nurse said you were here all night."

"They said you have to give me...permission to see her."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea--"

"Please. I have to see her."

"Why?"

He doesn't know what gave it away; what Liz saw in his face, but he knew with certainty she figured it out by the shift in her stance and loosening of her tightly crossed arms -- he loves her. He knows this. Has known for a pathetic amount of time and can't make it stop. He thinks back to the pursed lips and scrunched brow that look so much like Eames's as Liz made whatever decision she was going to make about him and her sister. She sighed and finally nodded an okay and let him in after she went in to check on her first.

In the three days since there has been a strange, but quiet agreement that he would be included in the rotation of visits and calls for updates. He knows he was only allowed this because Liz let him. Now that Eames is awake he doesn't know if the same arrangement still applies. If he'll still be allowed in this strange dance now that there's no more fear of losing her.

"Bobby?"

He pivots and sees Liz standing several yards away, arms crossed and knees locked firmly in place.

"How...how is she?"

"Groggy. She keeps asking about you."

It sounds like an accusation, so he looks down, shifts and then clears his throat. Then hears her huff and catches her rolling her eyes.

"Look, if you're not going to go in and see her you should just go home. You look like hell anyway."

She swings around, hands in midair in exasperation and leaves. And so does he.

XXXX

She's been awake for three days now and her family must finally be convinced she's really alive because the twenty-four-seven vigil has died since even her sister and parents are no longer camped out in the waiting room all day. There's no longer a rotation of people coming and going besides the nurses who come and check her vitals and force her up to move and walk.

She has not seen Bobby. She has asked about him but not nearly as much as she has thought about him, wondering what that glassy-eyed, overcome look meant. That look is there in her head as she sleeps or stares at the far wall or out the window when she's there alone. It's mixed in with the feel of shears against her skin, screaming, guns pointing at her; her gun pointing at her him. She balls her fists up in the blankets, pissed and tired how everything still comes back to that -- that some scared kid robbing her automatically makes her think of a painful, terrifying death and violation.

But yeah...I almost did die. For a second they thought I had.

And then it always comes back to the other death in her life -- she finds herself thinking about Joe, recalling his gunshot wasn't that far off the mark than hers. So why is she still alive and he's still not? She wonders when it was she ended up alone -- no job, no kids, just a dead husband and a partner who won't even answer his phone. For the first time in years she allows herself to wonder what it would be like if Joe was still alive.

Would they have kids? Probably. How many? Not too many, not with her being a cop and him being a cop. Would they even still be together? Would some screaming match one night about her promotion or his undercover stints or her partner have broken it all anyway? Would she still worry so much about Bobby?

She finds these questions were all so much easier to block out when it was just her in her apartment with Oprah or Rachel Ray on in the background, before being here in the stagnant, antiseptic-filled air of the hospital.

She groans and wants to roll over, but it hurts too much, and tries to sleep. She ends up crying instead, silent, stubborn tears, and then hurriedly wipes them away as a nurse comes to check her vitals.

XXXX

Sometimes he drives, others he walks, and sometimes he takes the subway from work, but he always ends up outside the hospital. But he doesn't go in. He thinks about it, one time almost follows an old woman in, clutching flowers to her chest, but can't make his feet move. He'll sit on the bench like some kid in time out, knee jackhammering, while he recalls how frail she looked in the rickety hospital bed -- small and pale and bandaged. And when the fuck did she get so tiny? She wasn't always that much smaller, was she?

Her closed eyes and breathing, steadied by a machine, play in his head over in over as he thinks about this, but he never goes in. He doesn't know what he'll do if he does -- thinks he might yell at her: How dare you almost fucking die? Or worse just rush to her and kiss her until she can't do anything but kiss him back or call the cops. I need you here with me. I love you....so fucking much...I can't not... That's about when his stomach turns and he just goes home.

XXXX

Her sister tries to get her to come home with her once she's released from the hospital, but Alex shakes her head and makes some comment about just wanting to be in her own bed. And she does. She also is tired of the sly, concerned stares and remarks like, maybe you should call that therapist you saw after...you know...just to...process this.

I was shot, what else is there to process, is what she says to her sister after she's made the suggestion. But a part of her just wants to curl up in a ball because she isn't even sure if talking it out can save her now.

When she gets home, everything feels foreign and out of place, like she's been gone a hell of a lot longer than a few weeks; like this isn't even really her home. Like her sister's been by one too many times cleaning and rearranging out her nervous my sister could be dead energy.

She drops her small bag onto the floor in the small foyer and then walks directly back to her bedroom. She pulls the covers back and eases in, groaning and pausing at the shooting pain, and finally lies down on her back. She does not, apparently cannot, sleep.

She huffs and gets up, fills her aluminum bottle with water, and fishes her cell phone out of her bag. She eases back down into the mattress, phone in hand, and plays a word on a month long battle of Word Feud with her little brother. She checks her email, wishes she could go for a run or clean the bathroom, but instead she reaches for the bottle of pain medicine and throws one down her throat, knowing she still has another couple hours before she's supposed to take one.

She lies there, feeling that floaty, ear deep in water feeling again, but she still doesn't fall asleep. She calls Bobby instead.

XXXX

When he hears the message, while hiding in a corner at the bank his company was hired by, he feels a tightening in his chest at the slow speech and despondent tone, tears obvious in the coarse, throatiness of her voice. And it scares the ever loving shit out of him.

Hey…it’s me, you know, Alex. Eames. I don’t know why I’m calling. Too many pain meds probably. But I thought you’d want to know I’m home, from the hospital. Or maybe you don’t. I can never tell.  

It’s the shaky breath he hears next that really does him in and he imagines her scrunched face and coarse voice like when she told him, “This isn’t one of your puzzles.” 

Uh, you know, just erase this. I probably won’t remember it anyway, so…just take care of yourself.  

Her voice cuts off and is replaced by that well mannered and Stepford-sounding voice asking whether to erase or save. He just hangs up completely and shuffles back to his co-workers desperate to wrap this up.

Three hours later, once he can finally leave, he drives to her apartment and finds himself staring up at the building, leaning against his Mustang with that same churning in his stomach he felt outside of the hospital because what he wants to do (go in and kiss her until she can’t feel anything but him) she isn’t really asking for. He figures she just wants a friend, someone who might understand a bit better than her family; who understands trauma and the fucked up things it makes you do…or don’t do.  And then his cell vibrates in his pocket.

When he fishes it out, he sees a text from her: did the building hire a security guard now? It’s such classic Eames that he half laughs and also wants to burst out into tears. Instead he looks up to the fifth floor and sees her outline peering through her curtains. The phone vibrates again before he can come up with a response.  

If you’re planning on coming in the door code is 3858. If you're not, I don’t need a vigil.  

He stares at his phone and then up at the window, no longer seeing her there. That’s when he finally moves.

XXXX

She doesn’t really expect him to come in, but then there’s a soft double knock on her door. She opens it as if she’s not expecting anyone, as if he could be some stranger with a gun, while he tilts his head and studies her with eyes dark with worry and something else she doesn’t have the brain capacity to think about right now.

"I'm sorry about that mess--"

"No, it's fine. I'm sorry...I didn't... " He huffs and straightens, shuffling backwards. "Can I come in?"

She nods and just walks away, leaving the door cracked for him. She hears him shuffle in, close, and then lock the door as she wonders into the living room. She eases down on to her sofa, ignoring the stiffness in her back and other muscles that she can't relax in her effort to not feel the pain from her healing wounds.

She can feel him hovering in the doorway, sees from the corner of her eye how he's stuffing his hands in his pockets, moving restlessly, but certainly not forward.

"I don't have cooties, you know."

"Sorry."

It's a muttered response, but it gets him moving toward the sofa and then sitting, even if it's so close to the edge he might fall off or bolt from it with ease.

"How are you feeling?"

She almost wants to laugh, but thinks she might cry instead. Sore. Angry. Lost.

"Peachy," she says. "You really don't have to stay if you don't want. I'll be fine."

"I know."

She can see him rubbing his palms together, fingers gliding, and she wants to be wrapped up in them -- wants something to make this uncertainty and failure go away. Before she really realizes what she's doing, starting, she's fisting the open collar of his dress shirt and pulling him downward.

"Wha-"

She manages to maneuver his lips down to hers before he can really protest. Shifting onto her back hurts, but when he starts kissing her back, freely supporting his weight on his arms, she thinks maybe it won't hurt so much anymore.

XXXX

Her hand brushes down his chest and tries to work the button on his slacks loose. He stiffens and pulls back, horrified and enthralled and completely breathless with her.

"Eames, this--"

"God, just get your pants off."

It's a breathy demand against his neck as her bossy fingers push at his now sagging pants and her hand worms its way inside.

Eames.

He's not sure if he says it or if it’s only a hiss between his teeth as he feels the warmth of her palm wrap around him. But it's her and that's the only thought he's capable of at the moment. And, really, nothing else matters now, so he just gets with the program and kisses her neck, chin, until he finds her mouth, tongue plunging in search of hers.

Then she's pushing against him with her free hand and trying to push her sweats and underwear down with the other, leaving him achingly hard and cold without the sliding and tugging of her fingers. He shifts, letting one foot plant itself on the floor by the sofa, and helps, dragging the material down, while she brings her leg up and out of the pant leg. He moves to do the same to the other, but then she's pulling him back down to her with her garments twisted around her calf.

He squeezes his eyes shut, breathes in the soft scent of her hair, and rocks against her, completely lost in the feeling of skin on skin. Then she's reaching down again, but this time so is he, opening her while she guides him forward. And then all he can do is plunge backwards and forwards again and again and again, against the arching of her hips.

XXXX

He's heavy and it kind of hurts, making the ache in her chest flare, but she doesn't really want him to get up either. She doesn't want to see his face or watch him leave or have to explain herself for letting this happen. But then he does get up, dragging his nose along her throat as he does and stands. She watches him rearrange himself and zip up, while she unknots her underwear and pants, and drags them mostly up and over her hips.

She covers her eyes with her palm, air gushing from her mouth as she does, and wonders if he's going to run away. She kind of wishes this was his place so she could. But then she feels his hands on her legs, lifting them, and then the weight of him sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, laying her legs across his lap. She feels his fingers brush up her calf, under her pants leg, and them working against the muscles there and she can't remember the last time anyone has done something so sweet and innocent for her that she might fucking cry.

Shit.

And then she sobs or whimpers or something that she misses because she's too busy tightening every muscle so he doesn't notice how ridiculous and pathetic she's being. But of course he does and his voice is soft, but ragged when he says her name, "Alex." And that does it.

"Why didn't you visit me?"

Her hand falls from her eyes as she asks it and looks at him accusingly, tears blurring his expression, but she can see his jaw working, lips parting, but no sound coming out.

"I-I was afraid. Of this. That I'd be the one..."

Oh.

She doesn't have a reply to that. She stares at him and maybe she looks a little angry or weirded out because he keeps halfway looking at her like a kid waiting to either be told he did a good job or receive a slap across the face.

"Do you me want to go?" he asks.

"No."

He relaxes, breathing out open mouthed and shifting back into the cushions slightly.

"Okay."

"Okay."


End file.
